IN his feature film directorial debut, Eriq La Salle, formerly of TV’s “ER,” takes on the big themes: God, the devil and mental illness.

Having a tiny budget shouldn’t preclude one from canvassing such subjects, but La Salle has bitten off more than he can chew with a morality tale whose thought-provoking potential is hampered by a made-for-TV look, rigid performances and an asinine “twist” that brazenly rips off “The Sixth Sense.”

There’s a promising “Twilight Zone” feel suffusing the opening scenes in which Dr. Ty Adams (Michael Beach) – an egotistical psychiatrist who fiercely defends his unorthodox approach even though it factored in the deaths of his wife and daughter – arrives at a Gothic-looking mental institution.

He’s to spend 30 days there, being filmed 24/7 by a crew documenting his effect on the patients and vice versa.

Assigned to what is referred to as the “Ripley’s Believe It or Not” wing of the hospital – the mental patients are an assortment of offensive stereotypes with exaggerated tics – he meets his match in a foppish walk-in (La Salle) who claims to be Satan.

The script is so overstuffed with painfully obvious clues (the constant patina of sweat on the cocky doctor’s face, for one) that we don’t need the ominous rumbles on the soundtrack to tell us where we’re headed.